An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter. But unlike most other occasions when flagrant incidents of foreign spying have been discovered on American soil, the Trump administration did not rebuke the Israeli government, and there were no consequences for Israel's behavior, one of the former officials said. The miniature surveillance devices, colloquially known as "StingRays," mimic regular cell towers to fool cellphones into giving them their locations and identity information. Formally called international mobile subscriber identity-catchers or IMSI-catchers, they also can capture the contents of calls and data use. The devices were likely intended to spy on President Donald Trump, one of the former officials said, as well as his top aides and closest associates -- though it's not clear whether the Israeli efforts were successful. An Israeli Embassy spokesperson denied that Israel placed the devices and said: "These allegations are absolute nonsense. Israel doesn't conduct espionage operations in the United States, period." Furthermore, after this story was published, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied that Israel was behind the devices. "We have a directive, I have a directive: No intelligence work in the United States, no spies," he said in a gaggle with reporters. "And it's vigorously implemented, without any exception. It [the report] is a complete fabrication, a complete fabrication."

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If you read this blog via email, you can now see how long it has been running, at the bottom of the email message. We're getting close to 25 years.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Manjaro may have lofty goals of becoming a successful company, but let's be honest -- users of the Linux-based operating system don't really care about that. Don't get me wrong, I am sure most members of the Linux community are rooting for the newly-formed company's success, but they are probably more interested in the excellent operating system itself. Today, Manjaro Linux 18.1.0 "Juhraya" finally becomes available for download, and it isn't without some controversy. You see, rather than just offer up LibreOffice like most distributions, Juhraya offers an alternative choice at installation -- FreeOffice. "After six months of development, version 18.1 of Manjaro Linux is now available. Juhraya offers numerous improvements, especially with regard to Office productivity applications and package management. Another significant innovation in Manjaro 18.1 is the integrated support for FlatPak and Snap packages. For this purpose, the graphical package management tool 'bauh' (formerly known as 'fpakman' ) is now available to users," says Philip Muller, Manjaro developer.

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The 25th anniversary of this blog is on October 7.

As supporters of Mugabe mourned, the decision to bury the former president in private has riled many party supporters.

Spanish football club president seeks to set attendance record at exhibition match between former world number ones.

At least 10 dead and 98 others injured in stampede at a campaign rally of President Filipe Nyusi, authorities said.

Mexican Foreign Minister Ebrard calls US court's decision to allow for enforcement of new asylum rule 'astonishing'.

ted_pikul writes: A team of scientists have created a device that turns the cold of space into enough electricity to power an LED light. As described in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Joule, the device is based off of a thermoelectric generator that creates electricity from the difference in temperature between a "hot side" and a "cold side." The researchers -- UCLA scientist Aaswath Raman, and Stanford scientists Wei Li and Shanhui Fan -- decided to take this idea one step further and use the ambient environment of Earth as a heat source and the cold of outer space as one gigantic cold sink. The prototype consists of four stilts supporting two plates sandwiched between a thermoelectric generator. One plate is aimed at the ground, the other at the sky. The downward-facing plate draws heat from the air around it, while the upward-facing plate is paired with an aluminum disk painted black. The disk acts as an emitter that radiates heat into space through Earth's atmosphere, cooling the plate to below ambient temperature. This effect is known as radiative cooling, Raman said, and scientists have known about the phenomenon for years. It's the reason why a window can be frosty in the morning even when last night's temperature wasn't below freezing, and, as Raman explained in a 2018 TED Talk, it's the reason ancient Persians were able to make and store ice in the desert.

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Switzerland's mighty Aletsch may melt away by end of this century if global warming continues unabated, study says.

Texas grand jury indicts Patrick Crusius, who police say went on a shooting rampage targeting Mexicans in a Walmart.

More than 200 locations were searched by police targeting supporters of Putin's opponent.

Environmental groups decried the widely expected move as "shameful and dangerous".

What nice internet users do, in a Twitter thread.

Kate Marvel, writing for Scientific American: We are, I promise you, not doomed, no matter what Jonathan Franzen says. We could be, of course, if we decided we really wanted to. We have had the potential for total annihilation since 1945, and the capacity for localized mayhem for as long as societies have existed. Climate change offers the easy choice of a slow destruction through inaction like the proverbial frog in the slowly boiling pot. And there are times when the certainty of inevitability seems comforting. Fighting is exhausting; fighting when victory seems uncertain or unlikely even more so. It's tempting to retreat to a special place -- a cozy nook, a mountaintop, a summer garden -- wait for the apocalypse to run its course, and hope it will be gentle. [...] It is precisely the fact that we understand the potential driver of doom that changes it from a foregone conclusion to a choice, a terrible outcome in the universe of all possible futures. I run models through my brain; I check them with the calculations I do on a computer. This is not optimism, or even hope. Even in the best of all possible worlds, I cannot offer the certainty of safety. Doom is a possibility; it may that we have already awakened a sleeping monster that will in the end devour the world. It may be that the very fact of human nature, whatever that is, forecloses any possibility of concerted action. But I am a scientist, which means I believe in miracles. I live on one. We are improbable life on a perfect planet. No other place in the universe has nooks or perfect mountaintops or small and beautiful gardens. A flower in a garden is an exquisite thing, rooted in soil formed from old rocks broken by weather. It breathes in sunlight and carbon dioxide and conjures its food as if by magic. For the flower to exist, a confluence of extraordinary things must happen. It needs land and air and light and water, all in the right proportion, and all at the right time. Pick it, isolate it, and watch it wither. Flowers, like people, cannot grow alone.

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